Gastronomica
Spring, 2011
The truism "You are what you eat" gets a good workout here in a fascinating analysis of a lunch that Nelson Mandela and his then-wife, Winnie, served to a white friend in the late 1950s, when South Africa's apartheid regime was at its apogee. Author Anna Trapido, who's both a trained chef and an anthropologist, uses the lunch - what she calls "a gastro-political moment" - as the springboard for a wide-ranging discussion on apartheid-era agriculture, culinary practices, hospitality, collective identity and modes of behaviour.
The friend, famous anti-apartheid activist Rica Hodgson, wanted "a real African meal" from the Mandelas. But when she showed up for that Sunday lunch more than a half-century ago, she was disappointed to receive "the same lunch I would have given them, almost" (roast chicken, potatoes, green peas and tinned peaches), not the Xhosa cuisine she was expecting. Trapido, a Brit, shows why Hodgson's seeming simple request was, in fact, "much more complicated than she understood." Titled The Struggle for Sunday Lunch, the article gives new, or at least expanded meaning to the term "domestic drama."
ARTnews
May, 2011
The world is awash in Edgar Degas sculptures, to the point where it seems every third museum of sufficient size seems to have a Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen in its collection. Thing is, as art historian Patricia Failing notes here, Degas only exhibited one sculpture, a wax-and-clay version of the Little Dancer, during his lifetime (1834-1917) and this was in the 1881 Impressionist show. All the bronzes you've seen in galleries and private collections were made after Degas's death, even though the artist left no instructions that this should occur.
The debate over what constitutes an authentic Degas moved into a new register last year when two New York dealers claimed to have discovered 74 Degas plasters made during his lifetime. Since then, several collectors and institutions have purchased sets of bronzes or individual works made from these plasters, notwithstanding the aspersions others have cast on their legitimacy. Joining the fray recently has been the National Gallery in Washington, home to the 1881 Little Dancer and the other surviving wax-and-clay sculptures Degas prepared while alive. In a footnote in the newly published catalogue raisonné of its Degas holdings, the gallery cites the existence of the controversial plasters, only to dismiss them: "They are intentionally not included herein."
Time
May 20, 2011
John Donne's apothegm "Any man's death diminishes me" seems not to have crossed too many minds earlier this week when it was announced that U.S. Navy SEALs had assassinated al-Qaeda kingpin Osama bin Laden. In the United States especially (and understandably), there was much rejoicing and considerable relief over his death, even as a welter of confusion, speculation and gossip arose in its wake.
It likely will take years - and many books - before the salient facts behind bin Laden's end are adequately revealed and sufficiently understood. In the meantime, there's this "special report" issue of Time, the contents of which easily meet the old saw about journalism as "the first draft of history." The lead story, Death Comes for the Terrorist, by David Von Drehle, demonstrates that even in this digital era, Time knows how to mine long-standing connections with the White House and other Washington institutions to deliver a compelling, factoid-rich, well-packaged tale. Too bad Von Drehle's prose is so atrocious: Helicopters don't just fly through the Khyber Pass, they "chuff urgently"; Osama isn't just a terrorist whose time has come, he's "the long-sought needle in a huge and dangerous haystack."